Thousands of foreclosure payments going to wrong people

Most Read

While it is true that a timeshare contract is a binding legal document, it is often mistakenly thought that such a contract cannot only be cancelled. In fact, most timeshare companies maintain that their contracts are non – cancellable. This misconception is perpetuated by timeshare companies and user groups that are funded, maintained and controlled by the timeshare industry.

The FHA 203k loan program provides home buyers the opportunity to buy and fix up a property, without exhausting their personal savings.

More than 25,000 homeowners will receive more than a thousand dollars in the mail this summer as compensation for foreclosure problems they never had.

EverBank Financial will issue $1,050 checks to 25,389 of its customers even though no mistakes were found in reviews of their foreclosure files, according to a Washington Post report.

The compensation checks are part of the foreclosure settlement that the bank made last year with the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. EverBank’s deal was part of a larger deal the government made with several banks that steered borrowers into bad mortgages, the Post reported. As the economy failed, many of those banks used shoddy or forged paperwork to rush borrowers into foreclosure.

Many consumer advocates have been sharply critical of the $10 billion settlement the government reached with the banks – in large part because of the paltry sums many victims received. Millions of borrowers, for instance, got only $300, the Post reported.

In 2011, the government ordered 16 mortgage servicers – including EverBank – to hire independent consultants to review their foreclosure files. However, the review was shut down a year later because no homeowners had yet received financial aid and the review was barely halfway over, the Post reported. Regulators negotiated a new settlement deal and most banks agreed.

EverBank, however, continued reviewing its files. The investigation dragged on for two years without a single payment to homeowners, the Post reported. At one point, the independent consultant hired by the bank said there were errors in 22% of its foreclosure files, most related to excessive fees to customers. Finally, the government pressured the bank to abandon the review so homeowners could get some financial help, according to the Post.

But that’s where the new problems began. The new agreement between EverBank and the government required the servicer to pay $40 million to the 32,574 EverBank customers whose homes were in foreclosure between 2009 and 2010 – regardless of whether the bank bungled the foreclosure process. Neither EverBank nor the OCC could explain how they arrived at those terms, the Post reported.

That deal means some people who lost their homes to botched foreclosures received up to $125,000 – but it also means that thousands of people whose foreclosures weren’t bungled will receive more than $1,000.

That’s probably going to be unwelcome news to the millions of homeowners who received just $300 from the 13 mortgage servicers who immediately signed on to the amended deal just to be done with the government review.

Some lawmakers are questioning whether killing the original review had the effect of cheating those homeowners, the Post reported. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said the situation “further underscores the flawed methodology underlying the settlement. It clearly confirms that the error rates across banks varied widely, and that the process would have benefited from the completion” of the review.

COMMENTS

by Teresa| 5/6/2014 9:57:10 AM

The big lender bank Flagstar FSB was found guilty of FHA fraud just like the other 'big' lenders & fined $132 million by the government, but the Flagstar foreclosure victims involved have not been offered any kind of settlement. Our mortgage with Flagstar was full of illegal tactics, and they refused modification attempts for 2 yrs. after a job layoff got us behind yet they foreclosed (MERS# on docs,) illegally anyway. Why hasn't the AG made ALlL the crooked lenders who have been found guilty of mortgage fraud compensate their victims?? Why has Flagstar Bank, a federal savings bank, been allowed NOT to pay any compensation to its numerous mortgage fraud victims?? Yet Flagstar Bank FSB made billions off the crooked mortgages they made.